LOS ANGELES -- Astronaut Gordon Cooper, one of the original
seven Mercury astronauts, has confirmed the existence of a mind control
program administered by NASA in the 1950's and 1960's involving gifted
American schoolchildren.

The astronaut's revelation was made during a July 19th
interview by host Mike Siegel on the popular, late-night radio program,
Coast to Coast.

During a discussion that primarily focused on Cooper's
beliefs that extraterrestrial beings are visiting planet Earth and that
some UFO's are alien spacecraft, Siegel asked Cooper: "Who were the
space kids?"

Cooper answered that "the space kids were children
with exceptional mental abilities run through a kind of MK program, like
the things that are coming out now."

He went on to describe how NASA's mind control program
emphasized cultivation of the children's psychic abilities and that it
involved telepathy, remote viewing, and out-of-body-experiences (OBE's).

Cooper's remarks generally support the claims of a growing
cadre of Americans, now in their thirties, forties, and fifties, who are
recovering memories of unusual classes that they were enrolled in as young
children during the advent of the Space Age.

These "study groups" included speed reading
lessons that enabled students to comprehend entire passages at a single
glance, the use of learning machines to teach them vast amounts of information,
card games and other situational exercises involving clairvoyance, and
seminars in the guided imagination that forms the basis of remote viewing.

It is believed that NASA's mind control program was directed
at preparing children who would later be able to communicate with the non-human
intelligent species that humanity might encounter in space.

This thesis is supported by the fact that one experiencer
remembers being tutored in a hieroglyphic alphabet that author Fritz Springmeier
has identified as a set of "intergalactic symbols" developed
by NASA for the purpose of communicating with extraterrestrial civilizations.

The accounts of some individuals suggest that in some
cases, the children involved were given drugs to enhance memory and learning
and were physically spun on table top-like devices to induce the altered
state of consciousness associated with OBE's.

Cooper's book, Leap of Faith, will be released to the
public in August.